Honest Christian Spotted

I spend a lot of time blabbering about the misrepresentations, dissemblings, half-truths and outright lies advanced by evangelical Christians in support of their political ends. In the interest of equal time, this entry is about motive honesty exhibited by a Christian living right here in dear ol’ Broomfield, Colorado.

Not long ago our local rag reported on Kohl Elementary School Principal Cindy Kaier’s decision not to have the usual Halloween party at the school. Not long thereafter, on October 17, the paper published a LTTE from some nutburger that leads off with:

Prayer is gone from the classroom, “under God” is out of the Pledge of Allegiance and now the ghosts and goblins are leaving the building. That is if the Kohl Elementary principal has her way.

Congress, swept up in the prevailing kneejerk anti-commie hysteria of the day, added the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954. From that day to this the words in question have never, ever been “removed.” Nor will they be. The letter’s author can find endless solace by checking 4 U.S.C. 4 on a daily basis.

Even more ridiculous is the author’s suggestion that Principal Kaier’s decision was somehow anti-religion. One of her stated reasons for canceling the party was that some families “don’t celebrate Halloween.” Having followed religion-government separation issues for some time, statements such as that reek of biblical literalist Christianity to me. In other words, people who spend disturbing amounts of time literally gibbering (speaking in tongues) and rolling on the floor (slain in the spirit) consider Halloween evil and anti-Jesus. Unfortunately, such people procreate, send their snot miners to public schools and spin themselves into a state of raging apoplexy when the school does something contrary to the Bible (as authoritatively interpreted by James Dobson, of course).

In accordance with the maxim that even a blind squirrel finds a nut on occasion, an October 21 LTTE suggests that I might have been correct. The author gets major honesty points for writing:

When my children began school, I was one of “those” moms who talked to the principal and teachers, explaining we were Christians and didn’t celebrate Halloween. I asked for alternative assignments for my children during October, as many assignments were Halloween based. On Halloween, I kept my kids home from school. They felt isolated sitting in the hall doing alternative assignments. I still couldn’t compromise, knowing the truth about Halloween.

She then engages in an irrelevant and largely inaccurate discussion of Druids, tossing in terms like “demonic” and “Satanic” for good measure. But also to her credit, she acknowledges that “Schools are not allowed to celebrate religious holidays.”

Whether she considers that rule applicable to Christmas — yet another pirated pagan holiday — remains to be seen. For present purposes, the candor of the October 21 letter is strangely refreshing. All too often accomodationists bent on purging public schools of anything they consider unchristian are less than candid about their aims.